


A Watcher's Word

by il_mio_capitano



Series: Monster [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-07 07:40:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5448632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/il_mio_capitano/pseuds/il_mio_capitano
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part three of Monster series. An assault is launched against Buffy and the New Council. Is Giles there to help or hinder?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Chapter one**

Buffy ran. She didn’t understand the impulse but as she passed under the trees and felt their oppressive enclosure, she felt sorely in need of the comfort of daylight, and picked up her pace and to drive harder, skirting the narrow dirt path and overtaking the other runners who were surprised at her inexplicable need for speed. The compulsion to go forward kept her from casting back any apologies and she drove on harder still. It was an unfamiliar sensation for her, a feeling of being helplessly trapped and useless, and this from a woman who had clawed her way out of a coffin she reminded herself, but it was as if these weren’t her fears at all. Buffy was not a woman to be afraid of the dark, and she was confident that there was literally nothing that could leap out at her that she couldn’t handle, but she couldn’t shake off the feeling of foreboding that had burst upon her lungs. She couldn’t quell the nagging thought that maybe she was being watched or followed.

She burst free from the wood line and finally slowed as the grey yawning daylight of the morning sky greeted her. The other joggers in the park looked warily at her but she opted for denial and continued back at her normal pace in the familiar well-appointed trackways till she reached the softball fields. She dropped her mouth to the water fountain to take a good look around. It was just the usual Sunday crowd of slim runners in earphones and chunky ballplayers in sweats ribbing each other about their ages and mortgages. Nothing out of the ordinary at all.

She walked casually around the tennis courts and the tall trees that had dominated the skyline in turn became dwarfed by the eclectic mix of multi-storey office buildings thrusting for the clouds and heaven beyond. It was usually so breathtaking to see the glorious symbols of vertical living in the city that never slept but today Buffy was still spooked by her previous paranoia to really enjoy it. She decided to run on to the office to check everything was cool. Dawn was doing a voluntary shift at the Medical Centre for extra credits so there was no need to call her. Buffy crossed out of the park and headed for the river to give her a comparatively uninterrupted trip Midtown. The cabs and sirens maintained their constant whirl of horns and yells she’d grown accustomed to. Those were not the noises that heralded trouble in Buffy’s world.

...

She took the elevator to their floor and swiped her pass to release the doors. It felt vaguely silly to have such elaborate security in such a prominent city but the Head Office of the New Council of Watchers felt itself safer nestled among other more corporate endeavours.  The Old Council had isolated itself in the past and been vulnerable to attack as a consequence, so when Robin had found they had leased the 20th floor of a corporate block in Manhattan, he’d jumped at the opportunity to use it as a small base and training centre for part of the year. The Old Council had installed a security system around the 1950s that could lock out the elevator and restrict access to their whole floor, but, them being the Old Council, they prompted failed to run regular maintenance on it and it often didn’t work as it was designed.

George King, the elderly security guard, rose from his desk in the centre console of the floor and greeted her arrival fondly. “I wasn’t expecting you today, Miss Summers.” Buffy liked George. He was old school Texas and had worked for the Council in one form or other for forty years. He wasn’t terribly effective anymore, but apart from herself, there were always up to a dozen Slayers around should he ever really need help.

“Hi George. No, I thought I should check in as I was passing. Is anyone else here?”

“On a Sunday? Quiet as the grave, Miss. Two of the girls are in the library working on an assignment but there’s none of the other staff. Mr Wood has gone to Brooklyn to check up on Miss Ariela.”

“Oh?” Ariela was the comparatively new girl in their little training corps. Her folks had been killed in a car accident before Xander had tracked her down in Israel, and he’d had arranged papers so she could stay and train in the States. She wasn’t his usual find, he usually ended up taming the wild ones with his calm authority, but Ariela had been different. She was sixteen going on forty-seven for one thing and had jumped eagerly at the opportunity to travel.

“She left word she was patrolling last night but didn’t check in,” George explained.

“It’s the weekend, teenagers are known to oversleep,” she chided.

“Not that teenager,” he affirmed. “I don’t think that one actually does sleep.” And he had a point. Buffy had tried and mostly failed to understand the kid. She’d tried to take her under her wing, but Ariela was pretty independent from the get go. They’d ridden the subway together, Buffy thinking she needed the big sister act but Ariela was no green kid when it came to the slaying. She was book-smart too with a sense of humour Buffy didn’t get and she was always in the library during free periods and even asked if she could look at the books Buffy kept locked in her own office. She was a bit of a mystery all round though by all accounts the other girls liked her.

“Mr Wood was concerned. He's gone over to her apartment block to check.”

Buffy entered her office at the far end of the corridor. The offices were boxed on the right hand side to face the windows and, when they’d moved in, she’d picked the second largest, furthest away from the elevator with its own restroom and by far the best shower. She pulled some spare clothes from a filing cabinet and took a juice from her refrigerator. Her office had formally belonged to the head librarian of the New York division and she’d left the heavy book stacks as they were, choosing not to redecorate as Robin had. She rather liked the gravitas of the room and the solidity of the tradition. They kept all the more ‘private’ books in there: the ones that needed keeping away from the really curious according to Willow, who was the best judge of such things.

Buffy took a shower and thought of her friends. Willow was currently giving it another go with Kennedy who was proving very hard to shake. Willow had broken up with her at least twice to Buffy's knowledge but somehow there was always the next trip planned. She was so unlike Oz and Tara it was hard to understand the deal except that Kennedy was unflinching in her devotion and it's hard to resist someone who so very much wants to be in love with you.  Buffy understood that all too well. Kennedy was no soft touch, but in her own way she wanted Willow to be Willow and not even Xander could object to that. Other people's relationships were always the hardest to fathom. Xander himself would date different women but she knew that none of them meant anything to him. He had enough confidence for the night but no stomach for a long term relationship.  Nothing was quite right after Anya for him.

Alas, there was nobody offering any devotion in Buffy's direction. She would go out with the team, dance, have a little fun even, but she wasn't really interested when any of the guys started conversation. Buffy liked being on her own. It had been nearly ten months since she'd even half dated a guy, and as he turned out to be a long dead ghost looking to sacrifice her as his similarly long dead wife, the relationship never really gotten out of the early, awkward phase.

She could joke about it but she liked her independence too. She was ‘just waiting’ she’d say when teased about some cute guy or other. Waiting for what? For the cute guys to grow up maybe, waiting to find someone who wouldn’t judge or smother her, someone that wasn't all ego and challenge. ‘Just waiting’, she'd shrug.

She finished up, dressed, tied her hair back and settled behind her desk, performing the ritual of cleaning her reading glasses which she did once, (and only once, thank you), at the start of each day, then took the plastic lid off her juice and started to read the overnight reports. There was nothing substantially above the norm: a possible nest on the subway and police reports of some suspicious assaults but just another quiet night in demon terms.  A voice said ‘too quiet?’ but she dismissed it. She had been such an apocalypse junkie that she'd used to seek out trouble and had always feared the worst. Working in the office daily, working to help the new Slayers adjust had been far more satisfying than she could have hoped for when she's signed up to be Robin's number two in the Council. She'd been incredibly responsible and had leased an apartment for her and her sister. Dawn had certainly thrived on the stability of the last 10 months, finally admitting to a desire to study Medicine when she graduated. She always was the brainy one and Buffy was relieved she wanted something so normal. Their mom would have been so proud.

Willow, Xander, Dawn and ….Giles. She tried not to think of Giles too much but he always crept into her thoughts at unguarded times.  Typical of the man and their turned about relationship these days: Giles came and went as he pleased around the world whilst she sat still with the desk job and the books.

In killing Ben and hence Glory, Giles had brought upon himself a vengeance curse from Glory's hell god brothers. He would fall to their domain and retribution when he died and in the meantime he would not know peace with himself or those closest to him. Willow had been researching but even she was drawing a blank in getting the thing lifted. Giles likened it to the Sword of Damocles and said he was fine about it, but they all knew that understanding what was making him act crazy, didn't make the crazies go away. She had tried to protect him, to help him, keep him away from other people but it had taken Buffy a week to realise that she was the person that made him the most crazy of all.  They hadn't worked out. They'd grated, they'd rubbed and she knew she’d have to let him go.  Giles knew too on some level but he didn't understand why. He had a hard time with trust since he'd been cursed.

But anyway, in a bizarre turnaround of situation, Giles was globetrotting, supposedly staying out of trouble, she smiled, ‘cos that was always going to work, and checking in occasionally when Robin queried his expense claims.  She knew he kept in touch with Willow and Xander too because they said he was fine and doing really well, but she resented not knowing first hand   for herself.

George put his head around the door without knocking. "There's an incident in the library, Miss Summers. Can you come please?"

She sighed. He’d said there were a couple of the girls studying in there. There was probably some sort of squabble over a book. Arbitration had become something a key skill for her. She filed that as another of life’s little ironies and rose.

The library was their biggest space and filled the whole left hand side of their floor. There were two double door entrances at either end as befitted its dominance. There was no natural light and the stacks went high to the ceiling meaning purpose built ladders had to be used to get to the really topmost shelves. The books were a mixture of what they’d found in situ and what they had accumulated from their own research. A lot of them actually belonged to Giles, but he wasn’t particular about possessions. The main protruding stacks clung to the edges, leaving a big old space in the middle for occasional training and team meetings. The light fittings where ornate and possibly pre-dated the 1950’s refit, harking back to the twenties when the building was constructed. It was, above all, a library with a great deal of charm.

Buffy entered at the base double doors to see what the problem that was so important it was keeping her from her orange juice, and was immediately assailed by a smell that was enough to put her off food for life. It was a mixture of alcohol and rough living - so not a fragrance to bottle for the Christmas market - and it emanated from a tall man with his back to her. George was there and looking worried at the intruder, but Julia and Fallon, the two Slayers, were clearly amused that a street person had bypassed all their elaborate security protocols and shuffled in somehow for warmth.  There were however, two reasons it wasn’t amusing for Buffy. Firstly, the drunken vagrant was waving some sort of cutlass deal, a curved sword with razor sharp edge and it wasn’t a toy waved by a fairground pirate but the real thing. And secondly, the vagrant was Giles.

“Giles!”

Buffy was shocked and pulled up in horror at his appearance. He’d grown a fairly tidy beard but let his hair grow a little longer than suited him. He wore brown corduroy pants and dark boots that looked worn but decent, his check shirt looked OK too, but for the collars that curled up at the frayed edges, but the jacket he wore was something else. It was the most appalling thing she’d ever seen. It had once been a substantial fawn winter coat but it now looked stained and torn, and worse, smelt of alcohol, vomit and urine.  He was burbling on about how he could never find a single Slayer and now they all turn up like buses and the two girls were laughing at him as he swayed about. Buffy thought her throat would choke her.

She’d had a couple of neutral emails, and various reports of where he was. Robin always told her what banks Giles’ cheque allowance had been drawn against so she at least knew some of the places he’d been. Following the paper trail his journey since he’d left at New Year was erratic though comforting. But she’d had no first-hand accounts of how he was. How he was adapting to the knowledge that he was living with a curse that would mean death would bring damnation in a hell dimension and not sweet rest. She bit back some anger at how everyone had told her he was fine, because on the evidence in front of her, he most certainly wasn’t.

“Who is this guy, Buffy?” Fallon asked. “It sounds like he used to be a Watcher.”

“Did we have any hobo Watchers? How equal opportunities of the Council,” declared Julia with a flippancy Buffy had gotten used to. Her folks had been killed by Bringers, and she called everything as she saw it in case she ran out of time.

“Buffy? Heya Buffy.” Giles turned and waved at her with his right hand and smiled goofily. Buffy’s toes curled in her shoes. “Know any good jokes? These girls don’t seem terribly bright and it’s a pity if the cannon fodder don’t get some entertainment before they die.”

Something was very wrong in how he spoke. He was apparently very drunk but there was a callousness there she wasn’t used to. Giles had always been about the Slayers. He never took out his personal problems on them. She’d seen him when Eyghon had messed up his life, found him reaching for the bottle instead of confiding in her and it took him a long time to figure out that he should challenge the Council over the Cruciamentum business and not just let them roll over him. He would have gotten drunk that night he was fired if her mom hadn’t made him sleep on the couch at their house too. When Giles screwed up he was remarkably immature about dealing with it. Had he screwed up now somehow?

His comment about cannon fodder had evidently pissed Fallon off. She was an impetuous girl in battle and always seemed keen to prove something to Buffy.

“I’ve had enough listening to this jerk.” Buffy watched in dismay as the young girl launched an attack on Giles. She went for his wrist to knock the weapon from his hand, but surprisingly Giles anticipated her move and was too quick. He deftly parried her away and she crashed past him and into the reading desk behind.

“Oh. Don’t you do any training?” He mocked.” I’m shocked, Buffy. Don’t tell me you actually just read the books in here?”

“Are you going to teach us something, old man?” Fallon was back for more and this time the gloves were off.  She made to knock him but again, Giles produced some fly moves and bested her. Julia started to look worried. Despite her quick wits she was still a little gun shy after the Bringers and Buffy had been trying to rebuild her confidence the past few months. Julia charged at him in panic but Giles swayed and laughed and yes, to be honest smelt like some homeless guy on a three week bender but still managed to repel both Slayers assaults. And puzzlingly for Buffy, he did it all rather casually - he never cut them with the cutlass he was holding despite the blade looking sharp and serious. She had a sense that if he’d wanted to harm them, they’d be dead on the floor already. instead, he was rather shockingly inviting their attacks but when they did, he toyed with them, only using the pommel to hit them if they got too close to his defenses.  His drunken appearance and his sharp ability didn’t quite stack up to Buffy. She watched his eyes more closely in fascination. They were bright not glassy. He was alert to every nuance in the room despite his swaying and appearance.

He was grinning too. “Well girls, time for the advanced training session. Break out the good weapons. Do you want to know what’s really an offensive weapon? American tea! Never tasted anything decent in this bloody country. Can’t believe we fought a war over it.”

Fallon stopped her assaults and pulled Julia back too. She regarded him with cold clinical eyes as she got her breath back.

Giles beamed. “Going to have to do better than that. Rollup, rollup, who wants to try their luck next eh?”

“Oh I surely do.”  Robin’s voice behind Buffy made her jump. He stood in his dark overcoat and scarf, face flushed with the change from the cold outside to the warmth of the office and in his hands he held a serious looking automatic pistol. He was pointing it professionally and angrier than Buffy had ever seen him. She didn’t know Robin even had a gun. Since when did they have that kind of an armoury?

Buffy instinctively put herself between Giles and the muzzle of Robin’s handgun. He was pointing it very assuredly; there was no shaking in his arms. The tip of the barrel didn’t move.

“Step away from him, Buffy.” She remained rooted to the spot. With his height advantage, Robin addressed Giles over the top of her head. “What’s the matter, Rupert? Do you only pick fights with girls?” Robin released the safety and re-pointed the weapon. “You’ve got two seconds to put the cutlass down.”

Giles grinned in pure provocation. “Or what?”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

**Chapter Two**

Buffy glared at Giles but to little avail because he was grinning stupidly with his entire focus was on Robin, not her. She turned to her boss. As Head of the New Council of Watchers she was used to Robin acting more rationally than this, yet here he was holding a gun on Giles when she hadn’t known he even owned such a weapon. Firearms were surprisingly ineffective against demons but she knew the damage they could do to humans and didn’t want to see what this one could do to Giles.

“It's just Giles,” she pleaded.

Robin gritted his teeth. “I know who he is, Buffy, but we can catch up on old times after he puts his weapon down.”

“You first, Wood,” Giles answered provocatively.

She glared at him again. He was up to something – she recognised the signs – but didn’t understand what. Though if he was trying to get himself shot, he was making excellent headway.  
  
“Robin,” she tried again. “He’s just-”

Robin cut her off: “Drunk? Irresponsible? Dangerous? Yeah I get that.” Buffy couldn’t help thinking that Giles looked tremendously sober now, and a small nagging voice at the back of her brain questioned whether he’d even been drunk in the first place.  The smell of alcohol was all from his rather distracting jacket but his boots, while scuffed, were not old and though his pants were dusty, they were no more so than could come from the subway and day-to-day life in the Fall. Robin meanwhile, all sharp lines and cashmere topcoat, was still pointing the gun and still looking pissed as hell. “How did he get in here?”

Giles waved his cutlass rather recklessly and replied, “Maybe you're not as safe in here as you think."

“Oh shut up, Giles,” Buffy snapped. “You are so not helping this situation.”

But Giles’ attention was all on Robin. “Are you really going to shoot me, Wood? I mean really? Do you think you could do that?” The temperature of the room seemed to drop a couple of degrees.

“I think I could find some motivation,” Robin answered with chilling composure.

Giles shook his head. “I think you're bluffing. I’ve seen you kill demons in a fair fight, but not like this. You couldn’t even stake the vampire that killed your mother.” Robin’s mouth twisted a fraction at that but Giles continued, “Because no, you had to make it a fair contest for the sake of your conscience.”

Robin gritted his teeth and Buffy had a shocking sense that he might actually pull the trigger. That Giles was certainly doing everything he could to goad the man was as obvious as it was inexplicable.

Robin was still icily calm in his replies. “Spike wasn’t threating my Slayers. At this moment in time, I have a right to defend the living.”

Giles gave him a lopsided grin. “' _Your Slayers'_ is it?”

Buffy had heard enough of the posturing, and to the surprise of both men and the two watching girls, she swiftly walked to Robin and simply yanked the gun from his hand. After resetting the safety, she ignored Robin’s wounded pride and turned to Giles, holding her hand out for his weapon in turn. He hesitated for a second so she rolled her eyes. “Do you want to fight me over this, Giles?”

He did not. He gave her a sheepish grin and gave up the cutlass meekly, then thrust his hands into his corduroy pants pockets by way of contrition. Robin moved unexpectedly from behind her and threw a punch, toppling Giles over backwards in surprise till he crumpled on the floor. Buffy pushed her boss back angrily.

“Leave him alone,” she hissed

“Yeah,” Julia jumped in with admonishment. “Can’t you see the guy is just wasted?”

Robin smarted at being the bad guy but backed down, his gesture made, so Buffy handed off the gun and cutlass to Fallon and glared at Giles as he lay on the floor flexing his chin ruefully.

“I don't feel very well now,” he declared somewhat unnecessarily and rubbed his beard. “Why is the room spinning?” Julia’s giggling helped relieve the tension and Buffy’s censure melted a little as she knelt down to Giles’ side, scanning his face intently. Up close it was clear that he was not drunk and that he knew that she knew.  His green eyes were clear and bright and burning into her hers. For a moment it was just the two of them and she felt a strange contentment.

“You’re not going to give us any more trouble are you, Giles?” she asked.

“Absolutely not,” he slurred playfully. “Scouts Honour."

She fought the impulse to giggle and composed herself into the position of Senior Slayer. “I’ll take responsibility for him for here on out,” she declared. “He can clean up in my office.”

“And maybe sleep it off,” suggested Julia who had brigtened now the danger was past. Even Fallon seemed to no longer consider Giles as a threat, much to Buffy’s relief. Robin, however, had sulked over to Fallon to inspect Giles’ cutlass. “There’s blood on this,” he accused.

“Must have cut myself shaving,” muttered Giles, triggering Robin to flare up in height again.

Buffy punched Giles lightly on the arm and hissed quietly in his ear, “Stop it now. Don’t overdo this act.”

Giles studied her in curiosity and said “Sorry” very quietly. Then he gave her a pleading look that left her torn. She had a loyalty to Robin. He’d given her an important job in the New Council and, apart from whenever the topic of Giles had come up, they had always been in sync. Robin was noble and loyal and trustworthy. She knew she could always count on him make the right decision; to do the right thing. But Giles had suddenly confused that situation. He'd introduced greys and shadows into her sharply defined world view. She looked back into his eyes and knew she couldn’t betray him to Robin. She needed to figure out what he was doing there and she needed to figure it out on her own. Giles was watching her face with a slight anxiety as she made up her mind and enjoyed the small thrill of the power she had. She liked independent decision making. She liked going it alone and defying expectations. She liked having Giles in her life again.

She smiled. “Do you trust me, Giles?”

“Always.” His answer came so openly and honestly it surprised her. He’d been so awkward around her the past couple of years she really didn’t know what he thought of her. They had been very close at some times in the past, deeply angry and bitter at other times, but now, when she was completely clueless as to what he felt about her, now he said he trusted her. The curse, of course, just messed up everything between them.

She swept her thoughts back to practical considerations. “Let’s get you up off the floor then.”  George came forward to help, and Giles leaned away from Buffy and onto the security guard. An act she was grateful for as his tramp jacket was seriously barf inducing. “On the count of three, tough guy,” she encouraged and they rose in a crumpled heap to something like stability.

Robin watched with a glower. “My office now, Buffy,” he snapped and turned curtly out of the library.

“Show him to my room, George. Giles, use the restroom in there and clean yourself up.  You’re unbelievably gross right now.”

“Right-ho. Sorry. I didn’t mean to er, yes, sorry,” he stammered, dropped his head and followed a rather wary George.

Fallon was the first to speak. “So that was The Rupert Giles. I’m so not impressed.”

Buffy could only shrug. The girl’s ego had taken a knock but she didn’t have time to deal with that right then.

“You should be,” was all she could reply.  
  
...

 

Robin’s office was at the opposite end of the corridor from Buffy’s and she walked in defiantly. He had at least left the door open so she didn’t feel too much like she’d been called to the Principal to cover for her friend caught smoking in the toilets. Whereas Buffy’s office had remained unchanged from the Old Council's occupation, Robin had remodelled his with shelves and lights to exhibit the weapons and confiscated objects of occult and demon origin he had acquired over the years. In pride of place he had the Slayer Axe prominently mounted on the wall behind his desk. It was the symbol of the New Council’s authority. Buffy indulged him his toys, she herself preferred the smell of the books for a working environment. Probably something that had ingrained in her blood from her time in the high school library. Probably something that explained her relationship with Giles?

Robin had taken off his overcoat and scarf and was straightening his suit jacket against his shoulders with some fierce shrugging.

“I’m really sorry about Giles just now,” she began. “I guess he’s not taking this curse business very well after all. He's good when it comes to saving the world stuff, just not so good at solving his own problems,” she trailed off as Robin eyed her coolly.

“We have problems of our own too. I’ve just come from Ariela’s apartment. She’s dead,” he said bluntly.

“Oh god.” Buffy slipped to chair opposite Robin’s desk. She’d found the girl difficult to fathom and hadn’t spent nearly enough time with her and now she was gone? The New York centre was supposed to be a haven, a place she could teach and protect the new Slayers, but Ariela had been so independent, so self-sufficient, that Buffy had focused on the others more. She’d been so smart  that she’d intimated Buffy a little and now that the girl had slipped from her protective reach, she had so many questions. “How? What happened?"

“She’d been viciously attacked.” Robin’s anger was mixed with his own sense of guilt. “Plenty of signs of one hell of a struggle. Furniture everywhere.” He was noticeably still standing as he spoke. “She was gutted with some sort of curved weapon.” He pulled himself up to his full imposing height. “Originally I thought scimitar, but now I'm thinking cutlass.”

The air seemed to be knocked out of Buffy’s lungs. “And guess what else I found,” Robin continued, reaching behind his desk to pull up a sleeping bag, a dark leather jacket and a brown canvas travelling bag. He unzipped the bag and tipped the contents across his desk, then went through the pockets of the jacket and threw those pickings down too. Buffy recognised everything as belonging to Giles even before his wallet, driving license and passport slipped to the floor at her feet. Giles was a travelling man these days, his whole life was now trashed across Robin’s office for scrutiny

Buffy didn’t need to ask where he’d found it but she shot Robin a look. “Oh come on. You don't seriously think Giles killed her? A sleeping bag could mean he was staying there, sleeping on the couch.”

“OK. How long has he been in town?” Robin asked impassively.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “He hasn’t called me.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Yes.” Buffy didn’t like the high-handed tone she heard in his voice. “It’s difficult for him being in contact with me. He thinks I don’t want anything to do with him because of this-."

“Yes, yes, yes. This curse. We all have to make allowances,” Robin interrupted somewhat tetchily. His attitude bugged Buffy to the point that she was glad she’d decided not to share her suspicions that Giles was only pretending to be drunk.

Robin grunted, sighed,  and stopped trying to look intimidating in front of the mounted Slayer Axe on the wall. He sat on his chair, leant forward and put his elbows on the desk. “We've lost three Slayers in the States this past week,” he said. “All brutal attacks with no witnesses.  It feels like someone or something is starting something, Buffy, and I have a duty to protect my Slayers from whatever is picking them off.”

“Yes but it's hardly Giles. He wouldn’t hurt a Slayer.”

“Maybe she interrupted one of his really big nightmares…” He let the accusation drift around the room. Ten months ago Buffy witnessed some of Giles’ nightmares first hand, and though he never showed any signs of reaching for weapons, it did take him a long time to wake up and perhaps he wasn’t quite himself then, but no, but she wasn’t going to be shaken in her belief in Giles.

Robin continued his theory. “Maybe he doesn’t even remember what he did. Maybe he came here in a subconscious act of penitence?”

She shook her head. Giles was up to something but she needed to talk to him before she said anything to Robin. She changed her argument smoothly.  “Except you said yourself the previous attacks have suggested a pattern, a calculated threat. You don’t really think Giles is masterminding some big attack on the Council?"

Robin looked uneasy. “We don't know where he is half the time. Large sums of money go out of the account we set up for him. It’s not always him that picks it up.”

“Oh come on! You’ve been following him?” Giles was seriously paranoid and the last thing he needed the Council trying to keep tabs.

He persisted in the face of her indignation, “And then he turns up out of the blue with one of my girls dead and him threatening two more in the library. How did he even gain access to this floor? Did you let him in?”

“No.” she felt herself blush at the outrage.  “What is your problem with Giles? I thought you liked Watchers. I thought your mom's Watcher raised you after she died?”

“I like Watchers that stick around. I don't trust the shiftless ones that get their asses fired and disappear for months at a time running up huge debts."

“If this is about the money,” she started but he shook his head.

“It's not the money. I don't care about the money, evidence today is that he’s been drinking most of it, but I would like to know how he spends his time.” Robin rose and walked around the desk to perch on a corner, his arms open in conciliation. “Don’t get angry with me, but what is his agenda these days?”

“He's trying to find a way to release himself from this curse.”

“And who are the sort of people that he could be asking? If Willow can’t do it then what sort of unholy power would it take? And what would he have to give them in return?”

It was a chilling thought. Willow had had the power to raise Buffy from the grave. She’d heard Giles smack down Willow’s insistence she was the only one that could have done that. The phrase ‘Oh there are others, and you wouldn’t want to meet them’ pushed unwelcomed into her mind, but she dismissed it. So Giles knew people, so what. That was a bonus in his line of work, not a cause for concern.

“This is Giles we are talking about. He's not like that.”

“Everyone is like that when their lives depend on it. It's even higher stakes for our Mr Giles because it's his whole afterlife depends on it too. When he dies, as one day he surely will, then he falls to a particularly nasty hell dimension ruled by Glory's brother gods, who want eternal vengeance.”

Buffy had heard enough and stood up. “He's a good man. I trust him.”

“Well I’m a cautious man. He killed Ben, that doctor, because you couldn’t do it and Giles thought it was the right thing to do. I get nervous with people who think they can act in the best interests of others. I get nervous about people who can bring themselves to kill as a cold blooded calculation like that.” Robin’s words were reasonable and his tone conciliatory. “Buffy, be careful. You don't owe him anything; he brought these consequences on himself. That's not your responsibility. He's not your responsibility."

“I know.” In the ten previous months she had analysed her feelings. She felt no guilt or indebtedness about what Giles had done. “He did it to save the World as much as for me or Dawn."

“Just be careful. We don't know where he's been or who he has been talking with. We don't really know anything about him anymore.”

“We know he's Giles,” she replied adamantly.

“Better be enough.”  
  
...

 

George was outside her office in full guard duty, but Buffy told him to stand down and he shuffled back happily to his reception console.

Giles’ unbelievably gross jacket caught both her eye and nose as she entered. He had discarded it and bunched it by the window but it still stank the place out. Giles himself was wearing the frameless glasses she rather liked and was sitting at her desk intently reading. He had pulled half of the books from her shelves and had the sleeves of his check shirt rolled up to the elbows. The memories of Giles in full research mode in Sunnydale High came flooding back to her happily. He’d looked up briefly at her entrance and then turned back to his texts - another familiar gesture she remembered.

“You’ve sobered up a lot quicker than you used to,” she said as casually as she could. She approached her desk, perched on the corner and gestured to the disgusting jacket.

“Not a good look on you. And so not a good smell.”

“Cost me fifteen bucks and my wristwatch to a tramp on 57th street,” he replied matter of factly without even looking up.

“Why? You could have just rung the front doorbell. You’re always welcome here.”

“I needed to be sure.”

“We've been through all this," replied Buffy, unable to hide the slight exasperation from her voice. She moved closer and as she did so she could see even more books had been tossed to the floor as worthless. He used to be a lot more respectful of the dignity of his books. Either something important was going down or his paranoia had reached new dizzying heights. Oddly, she hoped for the former.

“What’s going on?” she asked softly.

“Yes, sorry. Of course you're right but I needed to research something in rather a hurry. Ariela said you kept these volumes in here.”

She frowned. “Willow said these weren't the sort of books we should have out in the library."

“No, well quite,” he agreed and turned more pages.

“I didn’t know you knew Ariela,” Buffy asked, carefully biting back any suspicion from the question

Surprisingly, Giles smiled rather fondly as he answered. “Oh yes. Remarkable girl. I met her in Jerusalem. Well I say met, actually she rescued me from a group of vampires.” He looked a little sheepish at the admission. “Sixteen years old and no idea who I was or that I used to be a Watcher, but she acted all the same. I was checking something out and it got a little hairy, but fortunately she stepped in before I got knocked unconscious.”  He flashed her his cute self-deprecating smile. “She had no family left over there so I called Xander and he arranged for her to come to the States. She thinks the world of you - talks about you all the time.”

Interesting though that was, Buffy wasn’t about to be side-tracked. “What were you doing in Jerusalem?” she asked.  For a guy that needed to stay alive, touring the Middle East on his own didn’t seem like the most sensible plan.

“I was looking for some information.”

“About?” she prompted. God. He could be insufferably hard work at times and now he merely grunted, his attention back to his cross-referencing. She knew the signs of Giles in serious research mode. The library at Sunnydale High could have been on fire and he wouldn’t have noticed sometimes.  She put a hand on the top of his book and pushed it slightly down to get his attention.

“What gives? You don’t call, you don’t write. And when you do get in touch, you are only interested in my first editions."

He grunted again with a flicker of amusement that was quickly lost as he turned more pages to read.

“How long have you been in the city?”

He turned to the bookcase and pulled another sinister looking volume. “A couple of weeks,” he replied absently.

“Weeks!”

“I’m sorry Buffy, it’s complicated and we haven’t got a lot of time.”

It was his paranoia talking of course. Everything had become life and death for Giles. And whilst she could imagine him trusting no-one but a Slayer who’d saved his life, it still cut like a knife that he didn’t think he could trust her.

She pouted. “Don't give me complicated; I want to know what’s-”

Her indignation was interrupted by her PC abruptly snapping off, the air con unit’s hum ceasing and the office lights plunging them to sudden and frightening darkness.

“Damn,” said Giles. “They’re here.”

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

Buffy rose and calmly walked to the windows to check what was happening. The Council’s offices were on the 20th floor and gave her a good view of the people opposite. There were lights on in all the buildings across the street and the traffic lights on the corner were still fighting against the tide of yellow cabs. She could hear the noise of a distant fire engine and the inevitable sound of cars hooting, and when she peered closely, she could make out people walking to and from buildings below with no sense of panic. There were even the reflections of lights from floors below and above theirs in the glass of the building opposite. It was clear that the blackout was confined to their floor only and she sighed that the Old Council's fickle protection system had struck again.

Without electricity, her office took on a gloomy appearance. The bookcases looked more menacing and the lines between light and dark were drawn more sharply. Giles remained seated at her desk and drifted even further into the shadows. She heard him breathing hard and sought to reassure him.

“It’s OK. It’s probably just the security grid going to lockdown. It trips sometimes because of Old Council wiring. We lose the power, the lights and access to the elevator but it’s nothing to worry about. George usually fixes it in about a minute.”

But Giles was panicky and paranoid guy. He checked his pockets and then dragged open her desk drawers until he found a small flashlight which he promptly spilled through shaking fingers. Buffy dropped to her knees to help him find it.  He clearly needed a distraction until George got the lights back on.

“Tell me about Jerusalem. Why did you go there?” she asked as they both swept their hands methodically over the carpet by the desk.

“What? Oh, I’ve been trying to find out about something called the Seal of Gethsemane. I was following a lead to the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives. There are a great many scholars and archives of old scripts in that area and I thought I could find someone or something to help me track it down.”

“Sounds like a dangerous plan,” she castigated. “But then I’m not your mother. What’s the big with this Seal then? What is it supposed to do?”

“It is purported to be able to bind spells so they can’t be reversed.”

Like his curse she thought. Everyone kept telling her that as it was a gift from hell gods it couldn’t be overturned. Perhaps Giles was tracking down a means of unpicking it?

“Ariela said there was a possible text and translation about it in your office but she couldn’t get in here,” he added, just as they both found his flashlight. He pulled it from her, rose swiftly and sat back at the desk, leaving her on her hands and knees on the floor. The information about Ariela was interesting because it certainly explained why she was always in the library then - Giles had had her doing his research. A small pang of jealousy stung Buffy as she wanted him to have called her and she could have been Stealth Girl.

“If it hadn’t been for Ariela rescuing me that night,” he continued, “Well, I wouldn’t be here for you to frown at now.” He smiled his uncertain smile at her and Buffy tempered her unconscious frown in turn. “Toughest little thing I ever saw. Do you like her? She talks about you a lot.”

Before she could answer, there was a scream in the corridor - a man’s voice but much higher than it ought to be. Buffy made for the door but Giles caught her arm savagely and pulled her back. “No, you can’t help him now, Buffy.”

She was so surprised by his physical contact that she didn’t throw him off. He wasn’t exactly attacking her but then it wasn’t exactly a pass either. It was so unexpected. He was usually so uncomfortable just being in the same room with her and now he had his arms around her in a surprisingly determined manner. There were noises of commotion in the corridor and the screaming stopped abruptly. She started to struggle a little at that but Giles rather ungallantly put his hand over her mouth and using all his weight advantage, pulled her backwards into the bathroom just as her main office door opened slowly.

She let him back them to the shower wall and pull her very tightly to his chest. She could hear someone or something enter the office. Whatever it was came slow and cautious and made a slight shuffling sound as it moved. She couldn't detect vampire, but even without Giles' blind panicky reactions behind her she knew it was a demon. Giles' heartbeat was rattling against her back and she could feel the buttons on his cotton shirt dig into her. He’d positioned them in the darkest part of the bathroom and with the outage on the electricity it was seriously creepy.  She wasn't thrilled with the weapon choices she had in her walk-in shower and wouldn't have picked it out for herself as the best location for battle, but Giles was determined to hide, so for the moment she let herself be hugged by him and listened to the noise of the intruder in her office.

Abruptly the door to the bathroom opened wide and she saw the silhouette of their visitor. It was a creature no taller than she was, with long dark hair that covered all its body. It had a short disproportioned head with two orange eyes that glowed brightly as it looked at her. Its arms were long and curved and she could see that they ended in exposed razor sharp bone some twenty centimetres in length. There were pretty formidable weapons to be wary of even if the creature was slow in its movements. It stared straight at them and Buffy braced for the inevitable attack. She was already calculating how to battle it in the main office and keep Giles safe, when a second creature joined the first, now there were two sets of orange eyes piercing the darkness towards her. Giles continued to hold her tightly to him and neither of them seemed to be breathing.

Incredibly, after a minute, when Buffy thought her heart would explode with the tension, the creatures moved away and she heard them shuffle out the office and kick the outer door shut. Giles didn’t move straight away so Buffy elbowed him gently to get his attention.

“Mmm? Oh.”  He snapped to, let out a long breath and loosened his grip. “Sorry.”

Buffy left his arms and made her way cautiously back to her main office. As far as she could tell, nothing had been disturbed. She went to door and peered through the crack. The corridor was dark, but she could she could see a number of the creatures moving, maybe six or seven, appearing as dark shadows, and seemingly searching all the offices in the row. George’s body lay on the ground near his post, twisted in a grotesque pose of death. She closed the door very gently on the scene.

Giles meanwhile had returned to the desk and had switched on the flashlight to resume his reading. She was surprised at how well he’d composed himself now the initial surge of fear had passed, and at how he was calmly researching as if big hairy, slashy creatures came and went in his life all the time. Which evidently they did.

“What the hell was that?” she whispered impatiently.

He looked sheepishly at her. “Ah, sorry about that,” he twitched. “Sorry for the, erm, intimacy.”

Buffy hadn’t actually minded that part. She rephrased her question.

“What the hell are they?”

“Pokarroh demons. They are mercenaries usually. Not terribly bright but they follow the money.”

“Why didn’t they attack? That thing looked straight at us.”

“They have very poor vision. They rely primarily on magick to sense their prey.”

“And we didn't come up on their radar because?”

“Handy side effect of the curse.” He blushed. “Because it’s supposed to isolate me from people it also shields me from anyone trying to find me using magick. I just managed to extend it around you for a time. Sorry for the, erm, inappropriateness back then. I didn’t mean to, well you know. I wouldn’t normally have…”

Buffy didn’t want to fixate on that point. She was far more interested in the bat blind mercenary demons that were roaming freely about Slayer Central and had just killed poor George “So what do they want? What are they looking for?” she demanded. “This Seal of Gethsemane thing? Have you got it?”

“No. That’s why I really need to understand this text.” He gestured to his book and continued to strain his eyes at the tiny light of the pocket torch. Buffy paced, considering her options, and importantly, her weapons and how she was going to help the other Slayers and Robin. The demons had triggered the lockdown to trap them altogether and as they didn’t exactly look like tactical masterminds, somebody else must be pulling their strings. Giles had gotten himself into a whole heap of trouble.

“Did they follow you here?”

He turned a page and didn’t answer. The security system that was designed to keep them protected was useless if the threat was locked in with them. Then it became a dangerous liability. Buffy thought of the two young Slayers she had seen in the library that morning. They might not have the experience to cope.  They might even try to launch a reckless counter attack. Fallon was pretty level-headed but Julia was unpredictable in a crisis. Her duty to them was clear.

“I need to get the others out.”

“Agreed. Does your cellphone work?” Giles asked.

“No, too much interference in this part of town.” She looked dubiously at him. “Who would you call exactly?”

“Ariela. She’s very level headed.” He blinked with such trust and simple faith as he said it that she hated to have to break the news to him.

“Giles, Ariela is dead.” He looked blankly back at her, stunned at the news. “It’s true I’m afraid. Robin went round to her apartment and saw the body. That was why he was so angry. She’d been cut up by those things we just saw I’m guessing.”

“Her apartment? She must have made it back then. Oh God.” He put down his flashlight and book. “She was only sixteen,” he whispered and seemed to be in shock. “They tracked her there then. I did this.  I thought she'd be safe.”

“Why? What’s going on? What’s happened?”

“She told me to run. Said she could handle it. I’m letting children fight my battles these days.” He added the last line without rancour; his eyes still wide open as he fought to accept the news.

“This Seal, Giles. Did you steal it?” she asked as gently as she could. “Is that why they are after you?”

“Maybe we really should have left the Potentials alone,” he mused.

She took his left hand in both of hers. “Giles, focus. Whatever this is, whatever you’ve done, we are in this together. I know you. I know you’ll try to deal with it on your own, but you have to trust me. Your screw ups are my screw ups OK? I will protect you. It’s what I want to do.”

He hadn’t seemed to notice she was holding his hand. “We should get out of here,” he mumbled.

“Agreed,” she said, relieved he seemed to be back focussing on the practical. “The elevator is out but we can use the stairs to get to the next floor.”

He still seemed a thousand miles away but managed to mutter, “They will have posted guards.”

“Then I’ll deal with them,” declared Buffy. “But the most important thing right now, is to get you out of this building.”

That seemed to finally wake him from his grief. His eyes cleared as his brain processed her statement and he finally looked up at her as if she hadn’t understood a word he’d been telling her for the past ten minutes.

“No, the most important thing is to get you and the Slayers out of here,” he insisted.

Buffy smiled. “That’s heart-warmingly noble of you, Mr Giles, but these things are on a slice and dice mission and your name is high on their entrées list.”

“No, Buffy. You don’t understand. These are the demons that have been killing your Slayers recently.”

She was puzzled as to how he knew about that and his possible connection. “Looking for you?”

“No. There are after you. Somebody wants to stop the proliferation of Slayers. There have been shifting powers in the demon world, many people that are unhappy that the balance has been disturbed in favour of multiple Slayers. I heard a rumour of an attack on the Council and I’ve been trying to investigate so I could warn you. I still don’t have all the details, I just know there has been talk of the Old Ones opposing the new setup you have here.”

Buffy took a beat to process his information.

“The Old Ones huh? It’s never the New Pretty Ones,” she quipped.

“This is serious,” he replied harshly.

“Hey, I get that,” she snapped back and then felt bad as he’d flinched a little, but she pressed on regardless. “So you’re telling me that this is nothing to do with you?”

“Buffy, I know things have been difficult between us and I've lost a lot of your respect, but I would never do anything to hurt you. You have to trust me.”

“Always,” she affirmed without a shadow of doubt as to the goodness of his Word. He looked pained again at the intensity of her trust so she grinned and added, “Can’t make the same promise on Robin’s behalf though. He will be royally pissed you didn’t drop him a dime.”

“I wasn’t sure he’d believe me and I don’t’ have anything concrete to go on.” He gestured to the book. “This has all happened too quickly,” Giles explained. "I needed more time."

She nodded her understanding and returned to peer out of the crack in the door. The corridor had very brooding emergency lighting but there was no sign of the creatures and someone had removed George’s body. Her throat constricted at that memory. She couldn’t imagine George really being much a threat to them. He’d just been in the way and tried to do his best. With an empty corridor, the door that led to the emergency stairwell was unguarded and Buffy made up her mind to take action.

“We’re on the move.  We’re getting you out and then I’ll round up the girls.” She raised a hand to cut off his objection. “On this point, you have to do as you are told, OK?”

He nodded reluctantly, sheepish at her command. He’d always respected her authority in battle even when they’d first met and he’d had a lifetime of Watcher training whereas all she thought she’d known were a couple of good cheerleading moves. His faith in her had always been empowering.

She nodded back, opened the door wider, and led the way cautiously along the gauntlet of dim corridor. Many of the other office doors were open. She nervously checked them for any signs that would herald an attack of the fuzzy folk, but each was empty and Buffy also breathed silent prayers of thanks as each room was also apparently free of Fallon or Julia lying injured or dead.

“Was the attack on Ariela random then or were they looking for you?” she whispered.

“I don’t know. I have been sleeping on her couch but I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. Ariela fought them whilst I ran. Because that's what I do these days,” he added the bitterness in his tone obvious.

They made it to the stairwell without attack. The only closed door that could possibly house the demons was to the library. There was some evidence of flickering candle lights and motion in there and it was clear that that was where the action was going to take place. She turned to Giles and put a hand on his chest.

“You have to go. I can’t fight these and worry about protecting you. I care too much to lose you now.”

He looked so baffled and confused by her concern that Buffy fought the impulse to touch him, to give him a reassuring hug. He’d freak on her completely of course, but she was puzzled by her desire to touch his beard and kiss his cheek. Other thoughts drifted unbidden to her brain and she must have looked a little flushed because Giles had developed a glassy look of pure fear in his eyes. She sighed and dropped her head. He was going to need a boat load of therapy thanks to this curse.

But then she heard what Giles must have seen over her shoulder, the true cause of his fear.

“Slay-er.”

She turned sharply to see that one of the dark Pokarroh demons had locked her in its radar. Buffy looked back at Giles, but he’d taken three steps back and was pressing himself against the wall. His handy magick cloak thingy wasn’t going to work now the creature had a fix and he was saving himself.

The demon extended its curved talons. For most people this would have been pretty much be a fight or flight moment but Buffy had never been the running away type.

“Show me what you got then, you big old furry hearthrug, you,” she taunted, desperate to calculate the best way to keep it away from Giles.

It slashed wildly and Buffy threw a quick ranging kick at its chest as its arm sailed past on its follow through. The demon staggered backwards and sensing an advantage, Buffy fired more blows, moving the fight into the centre of the corridor as she did so. The Pokarroh seemed sluggish and slow to defend itself. Her tiny inner warning voice, the one that warned her about the folly of spending way too much on shoes, whispered to her that it was too easy. That Ariela was too good a Slayer to have died at the hands of a slow creature like this. She was just processing the thought, when she was grabbed from behind by a second of the demons. It must have slipped out of another of the offices. She wrestled to get it off her throat and kicked wildly out at the first again. She wondered if Giles would help anytime soon. Something in a broadsword would have been really useful about then. But help didn’t come. The first demon got a hold of her legs, raised her and wrapped her ankles under its arm. She was pinned and helpless. She tried to go limp and constrict her muscles but her captors merely spun her and took a firmer grip. She could see Giles now. He was still rooted to the same spot. He looked pale. Buffy tried to smile. It was OK. She understood. They seemed fixated on the Slayers and had simply killed George as a guy that had gotten in their way. She couldn’t bear it if they just executed Giles in the same casual way.

She smiled as warmly at him as she could. _‘Run Giles’_ , she thought. _‘For my sake, please run.’_

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

 

_There was nothing he could do and he’d never felt so helpless. Not since Giles had witnessed Buffy Summers jump to her death from Glory’s tower, had he felt so wretched and useless and now here he was in a New York alley, watching Ariela losing a battle with two Pokarroh demons. They’d jumped them from out of no-where on the way back to her apartment and Ariela, with a street fighter’s instinct, had backed them off away from the lights of the late night cars and into an area where she thought she could deal with them. She had snarled at Giles to remain behind her as she fought and, as he had no weapon, he could do nothing but helplessly comply. It didn’t make him feel any better about the situation though._

_The taller of the demons feinted a move to her left. Giles cried out a warning which was at least enough to startle the demon and give Ariela time to react first and swing her sword at its neck. She found her target and a wave of blood and goo shot across the alley and splattered Giles’ leather jacket. But as she grinned, her other opponent turned sharply to Giles, its orange eyes lighting up brightly as it curiously detected him for the first time. It had new prey and it lunged for him, its bladed arms outstretched. Giles ducked, swerved, stumbled and panicked into garbage cans. He crashed to the floor backwards just as the demon was dramatically cut in two from behind. Ariela was no longer grinning, instead her trim features were business-like as she addressed him._

_“How the hell did it lock on to you like that?” she asked, offering him a hand up._

_“The blood,” he replied with a grimace as he rose. “If they can’t find their target with magick then they use a marker.” He took his jacket off and threw it to the dumpsters_

_“Profligate,” Ariela chided as she darted to pick it up again. “It will wash out you know.”_

_Giles smiled at her practicality and was about to tease her about her domesticity when three more of the demons filled the exit of the alley._

_“Slay-er,” one hissed._

_Ariela coolly wiped the blade of her curved sword against one leg of her jeans and offered it to Giles. He took it eargerly but she tilted her head in a frown when he hadn't understood her meaning._

_“Take this as a precaution. Get round them and get out of here,” she explained._

_“I can’t just leave you,” he protested._

_She pulled a short hunting knife out of her backpack. “Yes you can, Mr Giles. Go to the main Council building and wait for me. Go and explain everything to Buffy.”_

_“But I can help you.”_

_“I know, but Buffy would be very upset with me if I let anything happen to you. Go to the Council. Don't use the main elevator – here are the spare keys for the service stairs.”_

_The sides of the narrow alley loomed up over him and seemed to hide the sky. The few doors and windows wore steel shutters and the atmosphere oppressed him, filling him with an irrational claustrophobia he’d never experienced before. He stood as panic and indecision mixed with chivalry and a lifetime of decency. Everything was happening too quickly: the attacks on the Slayers, his search for the Seal of Gethsemane, and now Ariela the Slayer bossing him around just like Buffy used to_

_“I don't know how to stop all this. I don’t know what it all means,” he confessed quietly._

_“But you know where to look it up,” she reasoned and smacked him on the side of his face for good measure. “We can't all be the Hero. Deal with your role as eternal sidekick and go do the research.”_

_“But-” Ariela glared away his objection and fixed her attention on the three approaching attackers._

_“Don’t worry,” she smirked. “I have no intention of dying on the street. Be very assured of that.” Giles believed her implicitly but he was still unsure he could ungallantly leave her to fight alone. She rushed forward to engage the Pokarroh, parrying blows and almost encouraging them to circle her. Giles gripped the cutlass and followed, the blade raised determinedly to help, but Ariela saw his intention, blocked him and then spun round him by his sleeve to push him clear from the danger and back out into the street._

_“Run,” she demanded as she returned to the battle. And, hating himself with every step, Giles finally did as he was told._  
  
***

 

Buffy looked at him imploringly but he hardened his heart and stood motionless to let the protection aspect of his curse shield him from the Pokarroh once again. She must despise him so much he thought. He wanted to run forward, to hack them to bits with something, to strangle one with his bare hands if necessary but he held back and waited. He watched as the demons carried her away into the library, and saw her twist in their grip to look at him once more. He thought he saw hatred flash in her eyes at his cowardice. He had betrayed her for the sake of his own selfish life. Giles blinked away a little excess moisture from his eyes and waited till the commotion died down and he was finally alone in the corridor.

“Good show, Giles, my bloody hero,” he muttered in self-disgust and thrust his hands in his pockets petulantly. It had been the surprising way the creatures had sought to capture rather than kill Buffy that had stopped him from interfering. However much a heel he felt, he knew rationally there was another game to be played out for her life and he hoped he could somehow make amends in her eyes when the time came. He just wished he understood more about what was happening.

Giles stripped away from the wall and headed back up the corridor just as the nearest door to the library opened once again. Caught in the open, he ducked into the nearest office space only to realise he’d chosen Robin Wood’s office and that that was the Pokarroh’s destination also. He had a split second to marvel at the Slayer Axe, hung as a trophy behind the man’s desk as a sure symbol of his authority. He hadn’t seen it since the collapse of Sunnydale when Willow had used it to unlock the potentials and defy the convention that there should be only One Slayer. He wondered why Buffy or even Faith hadn’t kept it: it was a weapon not a showpiece but then he heard the shuffling tell-tale noise of the Pokarroh behind him in the main corridor, and dived ignobly to hide behind a filing cabinet in the corner, his pulse racing.

He crouched and waited. Rupert Giles was a rational man and, having learnt the nature of the curse and the effects it had on him, he applied logic whenever possible. He knew a good deal of his paranoia was without cause. He knew his fear of being hunted; of being trapped were also, most likely, symptoms. But he also knew a Pokarroh demon that could slit his throat so easily he’d barely notice. And with that knowledge, Giles grimly thought, even paranoid men have a rational reason to cower every now and again.

He watched as the demon swept the shelves that housed some of Robin’s exotic collection, smashing items to the floor as worthless before finally ripping open on of the desk drawers and producing something that met with its satisfaction, Giles couldn’t see what. The creature then went purposefully to the wall behind the desk and ripped the Slayer Axe effortlessly from its secure brackets. Happy with its hoard, the Pokarroh withdrew and left Giles alone in the office.

Damn. Once more, Giles was left feeling inadequate, and thwarted in his plans to help. They had the Axe, they had Buffy and all he had was eight bucks in change and a card for the subway in his pockets. Giles got up off the floor and was startled to see his own travelling bag had already been flung on to one of the casual chairs. He checked the contents:  his wallet, his passport, clothes, everything was there like it had been laid out for him. He could run again, hide again, but no, Giles had had enough of running for one day. Eight bucks or eighty didn't really change that.

He snuck back to Buffy’s office and the books she kept. He needed to help _her_ in some way.  His mind had drifted a lot to Buffy in the past ten months. She didn’t want him around and he’d understood that and respected the need to keep his distance from her. Ariela had looked very doubtful when he’d explained the situation to her, but then she’d been young and had seen everything in black and white. Ariela hadn’t had a chance to understand how badly Giles had let Buffy down; how he’d betrayed her, disappointed her. And how he was doing it all over again. Sitting on the floor with his back to the main door, Giles retrieved the discarded flashlight and turned his focus once more to the ‘dangerous’ texts that Buffy kept away from innocent eyes. Maybe he wasn’t a Watcher anymore, but he was still one hell of a good reader.  
  
...

 

The creatures bound Buffy's hands behind her back and pushed into the library space. Without the main lights the place looked ghostly. The tables had been neatly stacked to one side freeing up a much greater floor space, in the centre of which, one the demons was painstaking chalking out a circle using twine tied to a chair leg. The hair bear bunch had a plan then that involved magick somehow. They really didn’t seem the type.

“Buffy!” Robin called from a huddle on the floor. “Thank god.”  He was kneeling with his arms bounds. Fallon and Julia, the two junior Slayers had been similarly captured and the demons pushed her down to join the group. She assessed the two girls: bruises and cut lips, but nothing that wouldn’t heal. Julia perhaps looked a little green. Half a dozen of the Pokarroh futzed around as a guard detail, two others were lighting candles.

“Are you all OK?” Buffy asked the girls.

Fallon nodded. “They seemed to want to take us Slayers alive.” She was brisk and business-like but even she looked shaken by the speed and the success of the attack

“We couldn’t… We heard them kill George. We tried to… but….not our best day,” Julia added, sucking her cheeks to keep her emotions in check.  She was angry at a failure that she couldn’t possibly be responsible for. She reminded Buffy of Faith in that regard.

She looked to Robin who, despite sporting some swelling near his left eye, was pretty unscathed. “They killed George but not you?”

He shrugged. “I’m not about to argue the discrepancy, though the poor guy never stood a chance.” They all dropped their eyes a little in respect. “It’s been a big day for unexpected visitors popping in,” added Robin idly, casually looking around the library before dropping his voice further and enquiring, “Speaking of?”

Buffy shook her head briefly and admitted, “He bailed.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Robin rolled his eyes but stopped when he saw Buffy’s glare. “No, it’s sensible. I can’t really blame him,” he added as an olive branch, but Buffy knew his views on the matter were a little darker.

The Pokarroh with the chalk and twine had moved within its circle and began to draw straight lines bisecting it at points. Julia bit her lip and looked nervous.

“Why is it always a pentagram? What’s wrong with the other shapes?” Buffy joked to raise the girl’s spirits.

Robin joined in with his best school teacher voice. “You’ll clean that up afterwards, young man.” Even Fallon smiled.

They watched as the demon completed its slow task and then make way as another produced a familiar looking leather satchel and slashed it open. Brass figures about 6 inches high jangled to the floor. Robin looked warily to Buffy. That had been his mother’s bag, and to their knowledge, the figures served only one purpose. Buffy narrowed her eyes to watch the demon as it lay five of the figures on each of the points of the pentagram, then begin to make a noise she guessed passed for low chanting in Cousin-It speak. Slowly, the brass figures started to revolve on their own accord.

There was no human narrative voice required as at last time, instead the figures took on specific human shapes and began to cast small shadows on the floor. The other Pakarroh joined in the chanting and the shadows grew elongated as they spun until they touched in the middle of the pentagram. With contact their shadows grew, rising upwards, becoming more substantial and solid as they fed off each other’s energy, twisting and dancing and changing into solid grey shapes that represented grey figures of real men.

“They seem to be coming here this time,” Robin stated flatly

Buffy nodded. “I think the pentagram is acting as a gateway. Maybe they can only exist in there?”

“Who can?” asked Julia in exasperation.

“We've met before. Creature-features here are just the foot soldiers. We are about to meet the paymasters. Oh, I know these guys,” Buffy smiled and watched as the five grey blobs merged their energies and fused into a single more solid, more colourful man.

The chanting stopped, the figures stopped spinning and all that remained in the pentagram was a surprisingly dapper gentleman who looked like he'd stepped out of some sixteenth century Dutch painting.  He wore a dark velvet crush jacket, pantaloons and white stockings that led down to shiny black shoes with rather pretty buckles on them. Buffy looked up in disbelief at the classic white frilly ruff at his neck that was straight out of Rembrandt, and above which was an auburn goatee beard and sparking dark eyes betraying amusement and excitement.

“Ladies, Gentleman. My greetings,” he beamed as smoke and shadows swirled around him slightly.

Buffy blinked and had to admit, “Don’t know him though.”

“Good morning,” the dapper man continued. “I trust it is morning anyway? Time is relative and so fluid don’t you find?” He shot his lace cuffs and surveyed his audience indulgently. “And this is the New Watcher’s Council.” It was a statement rather than an enquiry.  He beamed at Robin. “I am so very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr Wood. So very pleased.”

Robin stood awkwardly with his hands bound. The new comer gestured impatiently at the Pokarroh demons to release his ropes.  Buffy remained kneeling with the other girls, waiting for an opportunity as Robin rubbed his wrists and stepped confidently forward.

“Mind telling me who the hell you are?” he asked suavely.

“My dear sir, where are my manners indeed. My name is Anders de Groot and we have a great deal in common, Mr Wood.”

“I’m a snappier dresser,” Robin declared.

de Groot smiled and turned his attention to Buffy. “And Miss Summers. Most propitious. As I’m sure you’ve guessed; we have created a portal here rather than invite you to our dimension again. We have business to attend to that concerns the others.”

“Who is he, Buffy?” asked Fallon.

“The brass figures would suggest they are the Shadow Casters. The guys that made the first Slayer."

He made a little bow. “We are and we did. I’m so pleased you remember. We are the ones that harnessed the Power necessary to create a Slayer, and every single subsequent Slayer after her.” He stressed the word single with a playful smile.

Buffy shook her head. “I don’t remember you being there. You can’t personally have created any Slayers because I understood the deal to have been done a long time ago. Although if you are trying to keep up with fashion, you’re a long way behind, buddy.”

“I was not an original member of the group, I concede your point. I was however one of the founders of the Old Watcher’s Council. So you see we do have a lot in common, Mr Wood. When the Council first formed there was a conflict with the Shadow Casters. They opposed the idea of an institution to help the Slayer and sought to destroy it, so I was given those brass figurines and the magick necessary to enter the portal to argue for Peace and their Acceptance.” He beamed with not a small amount of pride. “I was successful in my mission and the Watcher’s Council was permitted to remain. I argued that in the modern era, a Slayer should have a guide to help her. Someone to help target her killing instincts.  They invited me to join them by way of a trade. It has been a fascinating experience.”

Buffy quirked an eyebrow. “You must be a big hit in the desert."

But he was not to be riled, instead, he seemed to find their taunts and conversation amusing.

“What you saw was a little pocket of time and our dimension. You can’t begin to understand the knowledge and reality of the eons we have at our command.”

“Why don't the others show themselves?”

“My voice is sufficient. One speaks for all."

“You don't have the power to all come through the Portal?” suggested Robin.

de Groot seemed happy to admit as much. “We have some limitations.  A wise man always accepts his weaknesses. But I’m afraid it’s not a limitation that will be of any help to you today.”

Robin nodded and then moved terrifyingly swiftly. He entered the pentagram and threw a punch at de Groot, but his fist made no contact, instead his momentum carried him through de Groot’s entire body, and he staggered to regain his balance as he fell through empty space.

“An interesting demonstration, Mr Wood. I should perhaps explain that I cannot be harmed. As a member of the Shadow Casters I am as immortal as the elders. Perhaps you should explain that to your children, Miss Summers.” His face darkened slightly. “In case they get any ideas of further futile assault. Explain to them our Power.”

“I don’t accept your power,” answered Buffy. “When I visited your dimension, you guys wanted to force a demon on me as you’d done to the original Slayer. You thought I needed to trade my humanity in order to defeat the First. Well, I managed anyway without your help. You boys can saddle up back to town. We don’t need you anymore.”

He snapped back with his first sign of anger. “You ‘managed’ by this act of gross larceny. This abuse of the Power we gave you; by creating all these Slayers.”

“Where I come from we have a phrase more the merrier,” shrugged Buffy, acting on her instincts to unbalance him, to provoke him with insolence. It seemed Watchers, the centuries over, had never understood Slayers with comebacks.

“Where I come from, we don’t,” he replied with a smile that was no more than a thin line of his lips. “There should be only one Slayer. Miss Summers. These are abominations, created from stolen magicks and it ends here, today,” he added with an air menace. Buffy felt a chill in the room and knew the two girls felt it too.

“Ah.”  His eyes lit up as he saw the Slayer Axe. One of the Pakorrah shuffled with it into the pentagram, holding it almost as a votive offering.  “Well done.” To everyone’s surprise he took the weapon cleanly; this at least represented solid reality for him. “Forged by the Women to arm the Slayer in battle. How sentimental.” He tested the weight and looked lovingly at the blade.

“You know of the Guardian?” Buffy asked.

“Guardian?” he replied with a sneer. “They guarded nothing and they achieved nothing in their misguided efforts to help the Slayer. They sat back passively just the same as the Men before the Watchers.” He paused to reflect on the perfection of the weapon in his hands. “However, maybe I should give them some credit as excellent blacksmiths. It is an effective tool for our purpose.”

Robin recovered his poise and returned to the conversation, “And not that I want to hurry you, but what is your purpose?”

de Groot spoke simply, “To put an end to this proliferation of Slayers of course. This new plague that scourges the Earth. And we will achieve this with a sacrifice.”

“Oh god.” Julia had gone very pale watching de Groot play with the weapon yet addressing Buffy.

“They are children, you see? You have diluted the source of your power, weakened it for all, passed it on to those unprepared to receive it. What you have done, can you see it is not right?”

Had she weakened herself? A moment of doubt crossed Buffy’s mind. She needed reading glasses now and her recovery time after injury took a little longer. But, no. She clenched her jaw and refused to be swayed.

“You’re wrong,” Robin challenged before she could speak. “We are stronger together. The Slayers in this room, around the World, they are all making a difference.” He grinned like a boy. “I think you’re just pissed because she stole your power.”

“You stand by your Slayer’s actions then, Mr Wood?”

“She has always had my complete confidence, respect and trust,” he declared.

“I’m delighted to hear it. History turns so often on individuals and who they trust. There are so many stories of betrayal and broken promises; of small men making sacrifices.” He smiled dangerously again. “Whereas we require a very large sacrifice and I’m confident you will help us.”

They wanted Robin. Buffy’s heart sank at the implication. They had killed George but made an effort to keep Robin alive for this moment. She thought back to her previous meeting. These men were not above brutal actions if they thought the ends justified their means.

“It’s a question of inheritance you see,” de Groot continued. “The axe was forged by the Women to be the weapon of the Slayer. We would have called upon them but their line is now extinct - destroyed by their weakness - it is no matter. So next we turn to the Watchers Council as the most credible authority in their place. Watchers also have a childish duty to protect that which is stronger than themselves, not understanding the thing that needs no protection. Yes, we have considered this matter most carefully and a Watcher’s sacrifice will be sufficient.”

“They are going to kill him,” whispered Fallon in horror. “I don’t understand.”

Robin backed out of the pentagram only to be intercepted by one of the Pokarroh who gripped his shoulder. At risk of having his collarbone snapped, Robin had no option but to bend and be proffered to de Groot.

And it was at that point in the discussion, with ancient history, lives and futures being debated over, that Buffy somehow became aware that Giles was there with them. She didn’t understand the feeling and hadn’t heard either sets of doors open, but she knew it was him just as sure as she’d seen him. She felt panic rise in her chest. Giles was putting himself in danger when even Robin had thought him better off out of this mess, and now the stupid, stupid man was trying to be a hero?

Buffy made to stand even with her wrists bound but one of the Pokarroh intercepted her. She struggled against her captor but it held her effectively. Robin gave a smile of understanding and gratitude.

“It’s OK, Buffy.” He turned an impressive figure of authority to de Groot. “I’m the Head of the Watchers and I will do whatever is necessary to protect my girls.”

“A thing I am most delighted to hear,” flattered de Groot but then he broke off suddenly and Buffy, sickeningly, guessed why. “Oh now, this is socially awkward,” he drawled. “I see we have another candidate to consider.” To Buffy’s horror, de Groot snapped his head directly behind her, to where she’d sensed Giles was. “I think it’s only polite we ask Rupert to join us.”

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

 

“Do come and join our little party, Rupert. No need to be shy. My creatures have been keen to meet you for some weeks now.”

Giles walked forward confidently and passed Buffy and the girls on the floor. He’d rolled the sleeves of his crumpled shirt back down and was carrying the cutlass he’d had before.

“Rupert Giles: The last Active Watcher. What an intriguing fellow you are,” continued de Groot.

Buffy was dismayed to the pit of her stomach at the unbelievably dumb thing he was doing. He should have been the other side of the city, buying a ticket for somewhere fast and expensive and yet he was, and thinking one sword could make a difference? Giles walked through the ranks of the Pokarroh demons impassively as they looked confused at their inability to detect the intruder their master was addressing.

Buffy shot a pleading look to Robin to try and keep Giles safe and he nodded imperceptibly.

de Groot’s eyes sparkled with amusement as Giles stepped confidently into the Pentagram. “You’ve been a hard man to trace, Rupert. And yet here you are all of a sudden, in the thick of the action. It’s not been your usual style.” He eyed the cutlass with amusement. “Whatever do you imagine you can do with that?”

Giles scowled slightly. “Which one of your demons killed Ariela?”

“Does it really matter which?”

“I’d like to know for later; I intend to kill it.”

de Groot snorted with a barking laugh. “Such passion for a Slayer! Really, we didn’t intend her any harm. The girl got in the way when we only wished to talk to you.” A sense of playfulness overcame de Groot. He pointed at the creature holding Buffy down. “It was that one if you really want to know.” Giles stared very coolly at the demon and nodded as if sharing a private joke.

Robin folded his arms, the razor sharp creases on his shirt stood firm. “I don’t know what you think you are doing here, Giles, but this is my Council now. You are of no importance anymore.” He turned back to de Groot by way of dismissing Giles’ appearance. “You want a Watcher? Then you deal with me,” he said impressively. Buffy saw the gesture for what it was and understood. Robin was a good man and he was going to protect Giles even if he didn’t like him much.

Giles unexpectedly put the cutlass on the floor and slouched his hands in his pants pockets. “I don’t accept your authority here, Wood. You’ve never taken a Watcher’s oath, never had to watch over a Slayer in the field.”

Robin spluttered back, “I watch out for all of them. They are all my responsibility.” He looked with a mixture of distain and pity at Giles. “Stay out of this. You really don’t want to win this argument. You wouldn’t want the prize on offer,” he added pointedly.

“But Rupert doesn’t wish to stay out of it, because he cares for the Slayers so, despite the danger to himself.” de Groot found the whole situation terribly funny and addressed Giles. “So single minded in your loyalty. You really are a credit to your profession. But I think you should really be blaming your Miss Summers for that girl’s death. The child should never have been in this fight. She should be at home with her family, but this one’s interference with our magick changed all that. Instead of one powerful Slayer, she created an army. Yet an army that are being slaughtered daily for the frightened children they really are.”

“We gave them a power they couldn’t hope to understand,” muttered Giles with more bitterness that Buffy thought he had about the situation. He’d been on board with her plan at the time. The words 'bloody brilliant' sprang to her mind.

“We don't have enough resources to support them all yet,” Robin conceded, “Though if you lent more of a hand we might do better. You waltz in here now. Big man with the big gestures, seeking vengeance for a Slayer you barely knew. But where have you been this past year whilst we rebuilt the Council? When we needed your help the most?”

Giles was surprisingly icy at Robin’s words. “You’re an accountant not a Watcher. You have some nice buildings and paperclips but you’ve had no training, no destiny, no Slayer. So back off, Wood. Buffy was my Slayer and I'm her Watcher.”

Buffy wanted them both to shut the hell up about which was top dog. de Groot however was being thoroughly  entertained.

“Well this is thrillingly competitive,” he gushed. “Miss Summers, as this concerns you the most, let’s canvas your views. Which one of these gentlemen is your true Watcher?”

“Neither of them,” she answered quickly. “Giles is being sentimental and Robin just issues my pay checks.”

The Shadow Caster wagged a finger at her. “Such loyalty to Watchers all of a sudden. One would never believe you’ve had one killed and two fired. Let me put it another way then, which of these men’s word do you trust the most?”

She looked at them both nervously. She trusted them both implicitly of course. Robin had been her friend and strongest ally for the past year. He’d worked hard to rebuild the Council as she’d torn around the world putting out demon fires. He’d strategized, planned, and based all his decisions on the welfare of the Slayers not the corrupt power hungry self-gratification policy of the Old Council - a Council that had raised Giles and indoctrinated their values into him. He’d certainly been mixed up about his loyalties for a time but he’d come good for her and she'd never really doubted him. Who did she trust the most?  She did not want to choose and certainly not if it meant the death of one of them. A small voice inside her knew the answer but that didn’t mean she had to share it.

“I trust both of them more than I trust you,” she said, sticking out her chin a little and gesturing to the Slayer Axe de Groot still held. “I’m not going to decide which one you can murder.”

His response was one of genuine puzzlement. “My dear girl, who said anything about murdering either of them? On the contrary we wish to reward the Watcher you trust the most.”

“There is nothing I want from you,” declared Robin.

“Oh you don’t realise how wrong you are about that,” de Groot replied menancingly. “Let me explain. The power harnessed to make a Slayer is like a simple plant in the desert. It is hardy, resilient and a beautiful miracle. This proliferation of Slayers is like a great unruly bush. Cheap and common, with thin roots that make it increasingly unstable.” He gestured to the Slayer Axe. “We intend to do a little pruning that’s all. Your witch used this and the power from your unstable lineage to unlock the potentials. We intend to undo that spell.”

“To kill all the Slayers,” declared Robin with contempt.

“No, no. You misunderstand. We are not barbarians. The power will simply seep from the girls and they will return to their normal lives. The Slayer line will continue as before through the one called Faith. She is Pure.”

“Can I be there when you call her that?” quipped Buffy.

“Hardly,” replied de Groot, his eyes now flinty in her direction.

Robin was struggling to comprehend. “But you said you needed a sacrifice. If not a Watcher then….”

“Then an Impure Slayer; the one that is the source of the proliferation. You, Miss Summers. Oh don’t look so shocked. You have died twice before I would have thought one more time would make very little difference.”

“Me?” She was the first of the line of course but it was still a struggle to comprehend the cold-bloodedness of the Shadow Caster plan to restore their power interests.

“You are at the root of this approbation of our power. You must die as part of our spell to restore the Slayer tradition to its natural balance. One Slayer, Miss Summers. One girl chosen in all the world to fight the forces of darkness. Not a ragtag gang of misfits and psychopaths.”

Julia spoke up bravely from Buffy’s side, “Willow will just do the spell again.”

“Oh indeed, yes. I agree that normally your little witch is capable of reversing any spell we do. She's dragged Miss Summers from the grave once and I believe her quite capable of reactivating the potentials a second time. However-”

Buffy interrupted him, her heart racing. “You want to seal the spell, so it can't be undone.”

"Very good." His eyes sparkled in appreciation of her intelligence and reasoning. “The best seal of all.”

Buffy looked at the Pentagram dubiously. “Is this the Seal of Gethsemane?”

de Groot positively purred his congratulations. “Not exactly but you are very well informed.”

“I wish I was,” muttered Robin who was still standing with Giles in the Pentagram with de Groot.

“The Seal of Gethsemane is not a physical object or artefact. Quite simply it is an Action, an atrocious Action. If your witch had been a little cleverer she’d have known that such great magicks requires an equally great Action to make it fast. Magick is based on spells and words but it also requires deeds and resolve for absolute completion. For example a resurrection spell that requires the Blood of the Innocent does not require the blood per se. It requires the resolve of the individual to shed that blood. It is the deed that cements the action, the will necessary to do the unthinkable. And the Seal of Gethsemane is the best of all seals. It is the ultimate Seal of Betrayal. From such an action, no roads can be returned from. Betrayal is so final.”

de Groot swelled his chest as he declared, “And the Watcher that kills his own Slayer is unprecedented, it is unthinkable and that broken trust will seal our spell irrecoverably.”

“No,” breathed Buffy.

“Our spell upon this Axe and your death will reverse the Slayers back to mere potentials. And the Watcher that takes your life will seal the spell for eternity.”

“Sorry to burst your bubble but that’s never going to happen,” interposed Robin, but de Groot seemed quietly confident.

“One of you will agree to do it. One of you will have to,” he stated simply. Suddenly, de Groot moved swiftly to Giles who was looking thoughtfully at Buffy, and placed a hand on his chest. The Pokarroh demons all shifted their heads in unison; their orange eyes turned in interest and shone a little brighter. They had a fix on Giles again now that the Shadow Caster had marked him with his touch. Buffy sensed his new vulnerability keenly. He was in the game now.

“Will you be the one to do it, Rupert? Or are you merely the last footnote of the Old Council?” Giles shifted slightly and the demons’ eyes all turned brightly as he did so. “I could have them just kill you here. You may be resourceful, but if I order your death, the Pokarroh will simply slaughter you like an animal where you stand.”

Giles shrugged. “I dare say you could.”

de Groot leered even further into Giles’ personal space. “And then you could go see those nice hell gods who are so looking forward to meeting you,” he taunted. “Oh yes, we know all about your little problem. You have no secrets from us.”

Giles remained impassive in the face of the provocation. “I'm a popular chap these days. Doesn't get you your sacrifice done though,” he answered calmly.

“Then Mr Wood here would do it easily enough.” He turned his attention to Robin. “Or he will when we start to butcher the two girls here.”

Robin squared his shoulders and said, “I am not about to execute Buffy for you.”

“Do you hear that children? He values her life above yours.”

Buffy looked to Fallon and Julia. It was an impossible situation. Their captures held all the cards. She smiled some reassurance to the two girls but they were both too shocked to acknowledge her.

“And then we will bring in more of your Slayers. You can watch as many of them as you like die until you agree.”

“Still never going to happen,” Robin stated.

Buffy looked again to the two Slayers. Fallon looked stern and resolved. Julia appeared outwardly calm but her foot was shaking. Buffy hoped it was because she didn’t like being treated as a pawn in the game and not with resentment at Robin.

Giles had seen their reactions too. He shook his head at Robin. “It’s not really a choice. How many would you let them kill before you change your mind? Would let them all die, just because you can’t get blood on your hands?”

Robin gritted his teeth but before he could reply, de Groot had sidled up behind Giles again and said with an almost seductive purr over his shoulder, “On the other hand, if you were to help us, Rupert, we could help you with your curse.”

“What?” Giles looked like he’d been caught in the headlights of a truck. Buffy fought for her own breath and the suddenness of the temptation de Groot was offering.

“You can lift it?” Robin asked suspiciously.

“No. No. It is a gift from gods. No-one can change that. But after he betrays the Slayer, he could join our ranks, as I crossed over to the Shadow Casters, so could he.” He turned his full negotiating charm to Giles. “We offer you a new gift of time, a future with us. We could have a great many fascinating conversations together. We have such resources, such knowledge we can share. Think of the time you could spend with our great library. Studying, not desperately skim reading for someone else’s needs.”

Giles was very quiet.

“I don't understand how that helps him,” Robin put in.

“He would be immortal as we are.”

“Oh god,” Buffy groaned softly. They had hit on his single point of vulnerability. He’d still be restless and unsettled, but he could cheat death and not have to spend eternity as the puppet of vengeful gods. Giles was rubbing his beard rather anxiously. He was also making no eye contact with Buffy whatsoever. Would he actually kill her in order to escape the hellgod’s revenge? The idea was unthinkable to her. Giles seemingly was thinking about it though.  In fact Giles was thinking about it way more than she was comfortable with.

“And all the other girls,” he asked. “You said they would be safe, just lose their powers, but no actual harm would come to them?”

“Don't you dare even consider this,” warned Robin.

“Perfectly safe, I give you my word as one ex-Watcher to another. They would have a chance to return to their normal lives.  To put things back to how they were. You said yourself it is a monstrous act to impose such a burden on children. You would be saving all their lives.” de Groot made it sound so heroic. He had sized up his target, found Giles’ weakness and was playing it for all he was worth.

“I was raised to believe in One Slayer. One chosen girl to protect the world.”  Giles spoke almost dreamily.

“Quite rightly. So, gentlemen, one of of you must betray the Slayer.  Which of you will do what is necessary? What has always been necessary?”

Robin took a step and pulled on Giles’ shoulder.

“This is not the right thing to do,” he pleaded. “Don’t accept this offer. You would sacrifice Buffy for this? Does she mean so little to you?”

“She means everything to me, but I can’t…” he broke off. Buffy leaned forward, desperate to hear how he felt about her. Giles looked at Robin, wearily. “You can't protect them all, you said that yourself.” He shrugged rather sadly. “We can’t even protect the ones in this room.”

“That’s no reason to give in to them,” Robin insisted.

“I think it is.”

“I think you’re tempted because of the offer of protection from the curse. Can you look me in the eye and say this is about nobly saving lives? That is isn’t about protecting your sorry skin?”

“It doesn’t matter. One of us has to do it and you’re not going to kill Buffy for them, ever.”

“Damn right.” Robin was getting increasingly frustrated.

“You would let others die before you could do what was necessary.  You think these girls’ blood wouldn’t be on your hands like Buffy’s would? That you wouldn’t see their faces in your sleep?”

“Of course I would,” said Robin.

“But not the same as if you’d actually killed them. You may be the Head of the Council but you can’t make that hard decision. You can’t kill one to save many. You just don’t see the necessity of the thing. They will kill the girls here, then bring more, then unleash a torrent of violence against all the Slayers in the world. And you would stand by your principles and let them all die.”

“You are a pragmatist I see,” encouraged de Groot.

“He’s a murderer,” countered Robin angrily.

Surprisingly Giles didn’t respond with any attempt to justify himself. Instead he smiled and spoke softly, “And you’re not.”

“I will surely kill you if you do this thing,” Robin hissed, “I will send you to the hell that waits for you.”  De Groot gestured and two Pokarroh stepped in and pulled Robin out of the pentagram.

“Not if he accepts our offer of immortality. Do try to keep up,” de Groot clucked in joy.

Giles raised himself in height, more in resignation than resolution. “I’m the Watcher, Buffy’s Watcher. I should be the one to do this.”

“I like you, Rupert Giles. You know how to play the great game. Sacrificing the pawns is one way to win, but it takes a real player to recognise when it's time to sacrifice the queen. You are a true Watcher. We will be honoured to have you join us after you have performed the sacrifice.” He made a little to bow to Giles who looked more like a condemned man that someone about to freed from a curse. Buffy understood why.

“Do I have your word on it, Rupert Giles?”

“A Watcher’s word,” Giles mumbled, nodded and put his hand out. de Groot smiled and reached out his own. The two men shook solemnly on their pact.

Robin was incensed and shouted, “A Watcher has never killed his own Slayer, Giles. Don't do it.”

But Giles wasn’t listening. de Groot handed him the Slayer Axe and sparks of magick flew along it’s shaft.  It glowed red with the spell of the Shadow Casters.

“Bring her.”

The demon foot soldiers grabbed Buffy to her feet and pulled her in to the pentagram. She gasped as she entered the magick. Apart from de Groot and Giles she could see wisps of the other Shadow Casters surrounding Giles. He seemed so lost, so unhappy.

“Giles, please,” she pleaded, more to get his attention than anything else. He picked up his thoughts and studied her.

“I’m sorry, Buffy. The girls can all return to their families. Creating the original Slayer was an act of barbaric cruelty. To rape a girl with magic to protect the world instead of taking arms themselves. And we did the same thing; we are just as guilty in unleashing all the potentials. We have taken their crime and made it a thousand times worse. You never wanted to be the Chosen One. You didn’t deserve a Watcher that always let you down.”

“You haven’t,” she whispered.

He tucked a stray lock of her hair behind her ear and rested his hand briefly on her shoulder.

“I’ll make it quick. It won't hurt I promise you.”

She calmed down at his soothing words and let the tension ease from her body. She was aware that it was faintly ridiculous of her to decide at that moment how much she cared for him, how much she wanted his voice, his eyes and his touch. But then her timing with men always did tend to suck.

Giles spoke softly, “Untie her hands please. She’ll give us no trouble now.” de Groot agreed and nodded to the Pokarroh to release her. Buffy felt the bindings on her wrists give, and stood completely still, looking up expectantly into Giles’ eyes.  She had absolutely no doubts.

For his part, Giles was looking intently back at her as if his heart had stopped and he needed her to restart it. The Shadow Castors continued to swirl around him. de Groot looked terrifically excited.

Giles took a deep breath and said, “On the count of three then.” And then with the slightest of shy smiles he added, “Do you trust me, Buffy?”

“Always.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

 

Giles raised the Slayer Axe over his left shoulder. It glowed a menacing red with the Shadow Caster’s magick but Buffy’s eyes never left those of her Watcher.

“Three then,” he said and swung the weapon in a vicious horizontal arc. The blade made contact with the Pokarroh nearest to Buffy and took its head clean off. Ariela would have been proud. The other demons reacted angrily to the surge of their colleague’s blood, orange eyes targeting in with aggression as they left Robin, Julia and Fallon unguarded in order to seek retribution of their own.

On ‘three’, Buffy, having made a mental note to ask him later what happened to ‘one’ and ‘two’, had dived immediately to the library floor. She skidded across the pentagram and retrieved the cutlass Giles had thoughtfully dropped earlier.  She darted out the way of a blow from one of the demons and cut out at its leg. It howled as she pulled back the cutlass and she skipped up to put herself between Giles and his attackers. She held her back to him and faced down the Pokarroh.

Two of them lunged but Buffy parried and held her ground. The blade on bone made a sickening noise but she knew she couldn’t risk losing the weapon trying for deeper wounds. The first time she’d swung a broadsword in training she’d got it stuck in a tree in the school grounds and it had taken both her and Giles some twenty minutes to lever the thing out.

“Oh really, Rupert. This is all rather futile isn’t it?” de Groot said mockingly and, given the lie to his dandified appearance, he punched Giles in the face and made to take back the Slayer Axe. The two men wrestled for it and crashed into the points of the pentagram, the brass figures slipped and fell.

Buffy could only turn her back and leave them to get on with it. The Pokarroh worked in teams, she’d figured. There were five of them left and they were subtly spreading out in order to flank her. She risked a blow to her left to try to keep them honest. Giles breathed heavily behind her and de Groot laughed at his comparative frailty. The other shadows swirled about her, trying to obscure her view and the pentagram began to glow red from the magick, until she felt like she was fighting from the inside of a fire pit. Three of the demons leapt forward and she tried to use the momentum of one against the others, but then a fourth came at her from her unprotected side and hissed “Slay-er” in triumph

And then its eyes went out and it slumped to ground. Buffy looked up and saw Fallon armed with a long sword. “Hey, Captain Caveman, there’s more than one of us, you know."

In the confusion, Robin had released the girls and dug out appropriate weapons. The Pokarroh turned to see the three of them looking a singularly determined group. Robin’s anger at being used as a puppet was about to be put to good effect. Even Julia, after having seen how the demons could be killed, wanted a piece of the action for herself. Buffy relaxed at the levelling of the odds and, picking out the meanest looking one as her opponent, stepped out of the pentagram to join the melee.

“You are being preposterous,” mocked de Groot haughtily. He shoved at Giles, his hands a fiery red as he held the Axe, and whipped the handle into the man’s face. Giles reeled, let go, and fell to the floor. “You can do nothing to harm us. Whereas I can do a great deal of harm to you."

He jabbed with the point but Giles had anticipated and scuttled to the last point of the pentagram. Buffy killed her demon and rushed to Giles’ aid, but was repelled from re-entering as if a force field had suddenly been erected. Even de Groot was a little surprised that he’d been cut off with only Giles.

“Really, Rupert? It’s a nice trick but you’ll have to do better than that.”

Giles sat up near one of the fallen brass figures. “You shouldn’t have underestimated my skill at skim-reading,” he said.

“I don’t think it matters.” The Shadow Caster made no effort to hide his contempt. “There are only two ways this story ends: either you do the spell with us or you die.”

Giles grinned. “I've got a spell of my own.” He touched the nearest brass figure and the other four rose up and began to melt. then the axe in de Groot’s hands changed in colour from fiery red, to purple, and then a cold hard blue.

Having won their physical battles, Robin, Fallon and Julia joined Buffy standing at the edge of the pentagram and watched in fascination.

“What’s happening?” asked Fallon.

Giles eyes had gone black and de Groot struggled to let go of the Axe. Its cold blue began to creep up his arms and the shadows and swirls of the other Shadow Casters moved frantically around him. By now, the brass figures had completely melted and the air about them began to grow cold. Even the pentagram started to shrink and look more and more like a desperate snow shaker.

“No,” said de Groot, as his face started to turn grey and return to the shadows from whence he’d come. His eyes lit up in realisation. “This is…this is…"

“Betrayal,” Giles confirmed brightly as the Shadow Caster lost his form.

“Get the hell out of there, Giles,” Buffy ordered.

“Not just yet.”

“Giles!”

The temperature dropped further and the shadows shrank smaller and smaller. It was only when he finally deemed they could no longer be a threat that Giles complied with Buffy’s assertive hand waving and foot stomping. As he rolled out of the pentagram, the air popped and the shadows dissolved completely, as if they’d never been there. Buffy ran to hug him and he actually hugged her back somewhat briefly.

“Had to be sure,” he mumbled by way of apology and she squeezed into his chest harder.

“You closed their Portal,” stated Fallon.

“Are they coming back?” Robin asked.

“Oh no,” said Julia with a smile. “Because they shook on it.”

“You used the Seal against them.That was very cool,” Fallon said in admiration.

Giles grunted and stood up, forcing Buffy to reluctantly let go. “Do either of you know how to get the lights back on?” he asked.

“Sure,” said Julia happily. “We’re totally on it.” And the slayers rushed off leaving Robin, Giles and Buffy alone.

 

...

Some two hours later, Buffy tracked him down. She knew the city well and certainly every restaurant, bar and deli in a fifteen block radius. The Sports Bar surprised her initially, but then given it had a sign boasting English Breakfast tea, she checked herself. It was crowded on a Sunday afternoon and the TV screens had a mixture of football, hockey and even some soccer. The seats at the bar were all taken and there was a lot of noise as the city unwound, but she’d got the unmistakable sense of his presence as she walked in and smiled as she spotted him in the farmost corner booth, his eyes sensing her warily.

She ordered a club soda and sat opposite him, her back to the TV screens. He’d picked the darkest corner of the bar with the best view of the doors. Buffy felt vaguely like they were an adulterous couple. They certainly seemed destined to always meet in the shadows. She saw his travel bag was under the table and kicked it a little to give herself leg room.

“We're celebrating,” she began. Giles raised his eyebrow to invite further explanation.  “I just resigned from the Watchers Council.” She thought and frowned. “Or just got fired. Depends who files the paperwork first, I guess.”

Giles produced a gold cigarette case from his pocket.

“You can’t smoke in here,” she challenged.

“I know. I quit.  Killing myself slowly is less appealing these days.” He flicked the catch nervously a couple of time. He needed a prop to fidget with. She knew the signs so well.

“Why are you no longer with the Council?” he asked diplomatically.

“Robin and I had a difference of opinion on Policy. Mainly he was pissed that he wasn’t in on the plan.”

“I didn’t really have an opportunity to-”

“No,” she interrupted. “Our plan.”

Giles blinked. “We didn’t have one.”

She sighed. “I know. I just trusted you and he doesn't get that. And you did your customary disappearing act before I could explain it, and oh, things just got a bit heated with Robin after that.” She sipped her drink. “How did you know you could use the Axe against them?”

He flicked his cigarette case catch. “The Women that forged the axe for the Slayer meant it as a weapon against the source of the Shadow Casters power. That’s why Willow was able to use it to release all the potentials.”

Somebody scored some points somewhere on the TVs and half the bar voiced its displeasure.

Giles smiled playfully and said, “All the best people get fired from the Council.”

“I’m thinking Wesley, Gwendolyn Post?” she teased. The points evidently didn’t count and the bar settled again. “Robin thinks I trust you more than I trust him.”  Giles looked a little lost at her statement. “He couldn't accept that we hadn’t colluded in some way. He doesn’t understand how I could trust you so completely even in the face of the temptation to cheat the curse. That I knew you weren’t going to kill me.”

“He’s had to do a lot of things on his own. It’s understandable.”

“I saw you were tempted,” she whispered in a shy voice

"Not tempted. Never tempted." He looked pained. “de Groot’s offer was unexpected, that’s all. Council History says he was lost in battle. I didn’t know he was still alive so his role was surprising to me. Although from what I remember from Council records, they judged him a slippery bastard even then. Anyway, how could I live forever knowing I’d killed you? It would have been a very poor trade; Eternity without your disapproval? Hardly Heaven at all.”

He ordered himself another tea and they sat in silence for a while.

Buffy had argued with Xander over Giles some ten months ago. He’d accused her of using Giles as a project. Of deciding to love him so she could fix him. She hadn’t really understood love then. She’d known Giles since she was a child and he was most definitely not. She’d thought of him fondly from time to time, and often not thought of him at all. But being with him now sparked nothing but happy memories of his company. He didn’t smile at her very often. He misunderstood her motives and her warmth to him. He was convinced she despised him at worst and tolerated him as useful research guy at best. But when she looked at him, stirring his tea, watching the windows, she saw a kindred spirit. A survivor. A warrior in his own way and his own time.

And Buffy had a small rather shocking epiphany. Rupert Giles may well be screwed up in many ways, but she realised she not only wanted to be with him, but rather surprisingly, she wanted all of him. She wanted this tall, sweet man who’d played so many different roles in her life exactly when she’d needed him to. And she didn’t want him to look after, nor to protect him. He was neither a pet nor did she did have a mother’s love for him. She wanted everything. She wanted the man.

“Are you alright, you look like you've eaten something disagreeable,” he asked solicitously.

Buffy snorted a quick laugh at which Giles looked puzzled and then a little put out. She studied his face intently till he ducked his eyes down and sipped his tea defensively. It was hopeless of course. They were long past the time when she could have done anything to act upon her thoughts. The revelation felt good though. It didn't feel like it had come from a dark place of pity or from guilt. There was no particular safety in knowing she couldn't have him and she did not did feel the idea elevated her love to something grander. It was what it was and she was who she was. She wasn’t a schoolgirl anymore and she wasn’t going to pout about the unfairness of it all. She studied him and her eyes widened in realisation. Hell, she was older than he was by about a hundred years. This wasn't the forbidden fruit of Angel pining for her, or the grand guilt of Spike winning his soul for her. This was about the man across the table from her, in all his complexity, the man she couldn't have. Cold, simple but tragically beautiful truth.

There was also the other side of the coin to consider. He’d never given her any reason to suspect that he was in love with her. She'd been a child when they first met, and even after she'd grown up beyond her years and possibly his, he'd never given her any indication that his feelings extended beyond a Watcher's calling. He'd been fired for exceeding that, but no, however much she thought about it, Giles had never once given her reason to suggest he that loved her in any way other than as his Slayer. He'd squawked when she'd implied he was her mother, but then most men would. He'd proposed rakish uncle, given her some money, and booked out of her life as fast as his fairly long legs could take him. That was after he’d been cursed of course, but apart from confirming the theory that she meant ‘something’ to him, something that meant she was the closest to him and why she wigged him the most, it didn’t explain what his feelings to her were. And of course, Giles wasn’t in any position to explain it then or now.

She took the spoon out of his hand and allowed their fingers to touch. He flinched as she’d expected, but in that split second before he pulled away, there was a clarity reflected in his eyes before the darkness and isolation took hold of him. She wanted the man and deep down, the man wanted her too, only he couldn’t process it with her so close. The curse distorted his perceptions.

Her serene smile provoked panic in Giles. “Have I done something wrong?” he asked nervously.

“No,” she smiled. “I was just thinking that I like the beard.”

“Oh.”  She thought he looked so cute when he was confused as he started fidgeting with the cigarette case again. “How’s Dawn?” he asked suddenly.

Buffy welcomed the change of subject with a knowing smile. “Dawn is good. She’s looking to study medicine,” she replied.

“Good gracious,” he spluttered.

“I know, another Summers girl licensed to kill,” she joked.

“No I mean,” he began to stammer awkwardly. “I mean she’s not a little girl anymore. So much has changed,” he added sadly. Buffy wondered if he meant anything more by that.

“I don’t know if it was her time patching up the potentials in Sunnydale,” Buffy mused. “Or maybe because of mom’s illness. She was always the smart one. She takes after mom so much.”

“That she does.”

He was looking into her eyes now that the topic was on safer ground. Oh he loved her. She was confident of that in the same way that she’d been confident he wouldn’t execute her.

“I keep losing you to these private jokes.” He frowned.

“I was just thinking how we’ve changed over the years.”

“Oh.”

Giles got the check and they left the bar together. It was starting to rain lightly.

“So now you’ve left the Council? What are you going to do next?” he asked as they waited to cross the road to the subway station.

“I feel like meeting Dawn, grabbing some Chinese, going back to our apartment, taking a long hot shower and going to bed. Care to join me?”

Giles looked strained. “Are you sure Dawn would want to see me?”

She had to work hard to stop herself from laughing. Innuendo just went right over his head.

“Of course she will. You could stay over on our couch.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea….” He broke off in panic. He had nightmares, of course, when he was near her. He was probably thinking of that rather than any sense of proprietary but she ached for a moment when they could both understand what was happening.

“Just for tonight. I’m not asking you for anything more. I know we can’t have more.”

The crossing lights changed and Giles stepped out to give himself space in the conversation. A yellow cab came hard around the corner and hit its horn. Buffy pulled Giles back by his arm and clung to him as if her world depended on it. He blinked in confusion at the intimacy and she released him and smiled.

“What’s the matter Giles? Don’t you trust me?”

“Always Buffy,” he blinked, unsure of her intention, but confident of the one constant in his world. “Always.”

  
_End of Part Three_


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